Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Mackinac Island

Waking up and knowing we don't have to drive for a few days was really nice. We finally got the campsite all setup and I put up the awning for the first time this trip.

The weather today looks to be the best (Mostly sunny and around 70 degrees) day of our time here.

This is a view of the bridge from the beach at our campground. I just missed taking a picture of it last night all lit up by the setting sun.

Here is the shoreline looking the other direction from the bridge.

A yellow Orchid very similar to a Lady Slipper we would see at home.

After a quick walk we had to head in St Ignace to catch a ferry over to Mackinac Island where we would spend the day.

Mackinac Island has no cars! None at all which is pretty amazing. Everyone rides horses and bikes, we brought our bike over.

The horses are BIG, and the town is very nice (In town they have horse poop patrols) . Although we forgot sunscreen and paid $17 for a spray sunscreen and 2 waters!

The best thing is the mail carriage which is a horse drawn flat trailer on which sits piles of boxes, a mail man, a ups man (in Brown uniform an all) and another deliver person. As the cart goes around they make deliveries.

After checking out a few maps we set off to ride the main state highway around the island. It is paved and is the only State Highway not to allow cars!

The scenery is great, we stopped a bunch of places to relax and hangout.

This is Arch Rock, there is a trail up to it but it is closed. Later on we end up riding there on the bikes form the other side of the island.

The Island is only 8 miles around, and mostly flat, but we haven't been on our bikes in a while so we take it easy. We are lucky it is early in the season and mostly pretty empty, I bet it is a zoo in the high season.

He I am following will on the smaller bike trail to Arch Rock, it goes past some old Cemeteries, a Battleground and the Airport. It also has a few hills.

We saw Arch Rock and ate our lunch before backtracking a bit to Fort Mackinac.

We saw a rifle firing and cannon firing demonstrations which were pretty cool, but the fort isn't nearly at impressive at Fort Niagara.

This is the front side of the fort overlooking town and a golf course.

It was time to get a snack and a drink!

In town we hit a fudge shop to get some fudge and grabbed some Iced Coffee. We relaxed for bit and then checked out the marina where we met a cool dog who lived on a boat. Her owners had great things to say about Alaska.

We finally got to have campfire and cook some more lamb over it. Our neighbor came over while we were eating dinner, he was a retired farmer and also had great things to say about Alaska and the Yukon. We are really excited to get there!

We also have WiFi here so I wrote the last few posts here since we had nothing in Canada. Not sure what we are doing on our last full day here, it got much colder (lows in the 40 last night!) and it is probably only going to be into the 50's today. We may take Maxwell for a walk and then checkout Mackinac City back over the bridge.